Lent (Latin: Quadragesima, "fortieth") is an observance in the liturgical year of many Christian denominations, lasting for a period of approximately six weeks leading up to Easter. In most Western denominations Lent is taken to run from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) or to Easter Eve.

The traditional purpose of Lent is the penitential preparation of the believer—through prayer, penance, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial. Its institutional purpose is heightened in the annual commemoration of Holy Week, marking the death and resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events of the Passion of Christ on Good Friday, which then culminates in the celebration on Easter Sunday of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Of Nazareth

(Full Movie)1977

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The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted statement of faith among Christian churches. It is used by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and most Protestant churches.

Roman Catholics refer to the Nicene Creed as the "symbol of faith." In the Catholic Mass, it is also called the "Profession of Faith."

The entire Roman Catholic faith is embodied in one prayer.

THE TRANSLATION

I believe in one God,the Father almighty,maker of heaven and earth,of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,the Only Begotten Son of God,born of the Father before all ages.God from God, Light from Light,true God from true God,begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;through him all things were made.For us men and for our salvationhe came down from heaven,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,he suffered death and was buried,and rose again on the third dayin accordance with the Scriptures.He ascended into heavenand is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again in gloryto judge the living and the deadand his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,who proceeds from the Father and the Son,who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sinsand I look forward to the resurrection of the deadand the life of the world to come. Amen

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During Lent, many of the faithful commit to fasting or giving up certain types of luxuries as a form of penitence. The Stations of the Cross, a devotional commemoration of Christ's carrying the Cross and of his execution, are often observed. Many Roman Catholic and some Protestant churches bare their altars of candles, flowers, and other devotional offerings, while Crucifixes, religious statues, and other elaborate religious paraphernalia are often veiled in violet fabrics in observance of this event. In certain pious Catholic countries, grand processions and cultural customs are observed, and the faithful attempt to visit seven churches during Holy Week in honor of Jesus Christ heading to Mount Calvary.

Jesus is nailed to the cross

This event, along with its pious customs are observed by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, as well as some Baptists and Mennonites.

Since the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church has redefined Good Friday into Holy Saturday as the first two days of the Easter Triduum rather than the last two days of Lent, but Lenten observances are maintained until the Easter Vigil.

In those churches which follow the Rite of Constantinople (e.g. Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics), the forty days of Lent are counted differently; also, the date of Pascha (Easter) is calculated differently in the East than in the West (see Computus). The fast begins on Clean Monday, and Sundays are included in the count; thus, counting uninterruptedly from Clean Monday, Great Lent ends on the fortieth consecutive day, which is the Friday before Palm Sunday. The days of Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday and Holy Week are considered a distinct period of fasting. For more detailed information about the Eastern Christian practice of Lent, see the article Great Lent.

There are over 250 incorrupted Catholic Saints

Bodies of incorrupted saints

Among Oriental Orthodox Catholics, there are various local traditions regarding Lent. The Coptic, Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches observe eight weeks of Lent, which, with both Saturdays and Sundays exempt, has forty days of fasting.[9] The first seven days of the fast are considered by some to be an optional time of preparation. Others attribute these seven days to the fast of Holofernes who asked the Syrian Christians to fast for him after they requested his assistance to repel the invading pagan Persians. Joyous Saturday and the week preceding it are counted separately from the forty day fast in accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions giving an extra eight days.

Angelic Lord’s Prayer by Andrea Bocelli for Pope Francis

There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigour during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards neighbor). Today, some people give up a vice of theirs, add something that will bring them closer to God, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations.

Schubert - Ave Maria

In many liturgical Christian denominations, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday form the Easter Triduum.[13] Lent is a season of grief that necessarily ends with a great celebration of Easter. It is known in Eastern Orthodox circles as the season of "Bright Sadness." It is a season of sorrowful reflection which is punctuated by breaks in the fast on Sundays.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Saint Valentine was a bishop who lived in the third century in Rome who fight against Emperor Claudius II who ban marriage between two young lovers.

Saint Valentine held the law of the church and helped lovers who came to him, uniting them in a holy matrimony, but it was only a matter of time before the Emperor heard about this and had him arrested.

Valentine was imprisoned. While waiting for his sentence, his jailor Asterius approached him to use his saintly power, and heal his blind daughter. Valentine succeeded and her sight was restored -- they became close and fell in love.

After a while, the Emperor asked Saint Valentine to agree with the emperor about the ban on marriage, thus giving up his religion. Valentine refused.

Just before his execution, Valentine asked for a pen and paper and signed a farewell message to his lover, "from your Valentine"; a phrase that lived ever after.

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Saint Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day, or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is observed and celebrated in many countries around the world on February 14 each year.

St. Valentine's Day began as a liturgical celebration for early Christian saints named Valentinus as follows:

Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who was martyred about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flamina. He was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. During his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote "from your Valentine" as a farewell to her.

Additional Note:One Valentine was a Roman priest and doctor who was persecuted by the emperor Claudius II for marrying Christian couples. Claudius took a liking to Valentine, but Valentine overstepped his bounds when he tried to convert the emperor, and Claudius sentenced him to death -- and an ugly death at that. He was beaten, stoned, and finally beheaded.

There is another Valentine who appears in early martyrologies: a bishop of Terni, Italy, who was also allegedly persecuted in Rome. It's been proposed that this man was one and the same as the Valentine executed by Claudius.

The feast of St. Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496. Some say that Valentine's feast day is celebrated in February because the church wanted to Christianize an ancient Roman pagan festival called Lupercalia, which centered around fertility and purification, and also took place in February.

This same situation of changing a holiday happened with Christmas being held on Dec. 25.

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The celebration of Saint Valentine did
not have any romantic connotations until Geoffrey
Chaucer’s
poetry about "Valentines" in the 14th century, when the tradition of courtly
love flourished. By the 15th century, it
had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each
other by presenting flowers, offering confectionary, and sending greeting cards
(known as "valentines").Valentine's Day symbols that are used
today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged
Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to
mass-produced greeting cards.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Mount Toromocho, meaning "a bull without horns" in Spanish, is a mountain in the Junín Region, Peru that sits next to the long established mining camp of Morococha and hosts a large polymetallic metal deposit.

The entire majestic mountain is now owned by the Aluminum Corporation of China (ChinalcoformerlyChalco) intended for a large open pit mine on the mountain and production of 210,000 tonnes copper annually.

One of the world's 10 largest

copper expansion projects

Toromocho contains a reserve of 1.526 Mt of ore with an average grade of copper of 0.48%.

Detonation on May 3, 2014.The rock that fell near the carpentry workshopleft a ten-foot forrest on the floor.Photo by Morococha Defense Front.

Now we are talking about an undetermined nearing extinction of Peruvian
anchovy, or anchoveta. Three million tons of sardines (a year) were
caught twenty years ago and NOT EVEN a ton can be captured these days.Let us also be reminded that organoarsenic compounds, especially those featuring As-Cl bonds, have been used as chemical weapons, especially during World War I.

Alcoa established an 8% stake in China's state-run aluminum industry and has formed a strategic alliance with Aluminium Corporation of China (Chalco), China's largest aluminum producer, at its Pingguo facility. Alcoa sold this stake on September 12, 2007.

Open-pit mines are typically enlarged until either the mineral resource is exhausted, or an increasing ratio of overburden to ore makes further mining uneconomic. When this occurs, the exhausted mines are sometimes converted to landfills for disposal of solid wastes. However, some form of water control is usually required to keep the mine pit from becoming a lake.

Other open pit mines for earth's precious minerals. .

A coquina quarry.

El Chino, located near Silver City, New Mexico, is an open-pit copper mine

Today the Big Ten aluminum manufacturers are:

Resources of bauxites, the raw material for aluminium, are not widespread throughout the world.

There are only seven bauxite-rich areas: Western and Central Africa (mostly, Guinea), South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Suriname), the Caribbean (Jamaica), Oceania and Southern Asia (Australia, India), China, the Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey) and the Urals (Russia).

The main deposits of high-quality bauxites with high aluminium content (not less than 50%), are already divided by the main players.

Other companies have to either buy alumina on the free-market — and wholly depend on price movements — or join forces with deposit owners.

Whoever owns resources owns the world . . .

Bauxite Mining in Forest Areas

The conservation of rain forests is a key concern often voiced with regard to bauxite mining.

However there are deep concerns on how …. the original flora and fauna of much of the land involved in bauxite mining is restored once mining operations have ceased.

For all forest areas used for bauxite mining, 80% is returned to native forests, the rest is replaced by agriculture, commercial forest, or recreational area, thereby making the area more productive for the local community.

So it really should not come as surprise on why there are landslides, flash floods of biblical proportions and questionable earth movement near and far from where heavy mining are undertaken.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

1) A new fund backed by the Norwegian government has been launched that will raise $400 million and protect 5 million hectares in countries working to reduce deforestation and forest and peat degradation. The fund could lead to $1.6 billion in deforestation-free agriculture investments, also leading to job creation and economic growth.

3) Signatories to the Forum’s New Vision for Arab Employment project said they have now helped re-skill 250,000 people since 2013, and are now targeting 1 million current and future workers.

4) The Forum teamed with the University of California Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute to build a coalition to protect the world’s oceans and marine resources; a global commons estimated by the World Wildlife Fund to be worth $2.5 trillion.

5) The Forum mobilized a public-private coalition to build a responsible, inclusive and sustainable battery supply chain. The lithium-ion battery market is expected to be worth $70 billion by 2024, yet production is linked to issues such as child labour, health and safety hazards for workers, environmental impacts and life-cycle sustainability.

6) 40 governments and businesses, including some of world’s largest consumer goods, retailers and recycling firms, endorsed a plan to increase global reuse and recycling rates for plastic packaging from its current 14% to 70%.

7) Social Entrepreneur Gary White of water.org, co-founded with Matt Damon, announced a major expanded partnership with Stella Artois to help provide clean water to 3.5 million people.

8) GoodWeave International, another social enterprise, announced a new international programme, Sourcing Freedom, to stop modern slavery in supply chains. There are estimated to be 21 million people in forced and bonded labour around the globe. The programme is backed by a number of global businesses from across a range of industries.

9) Some of the world’s largest financial service providers, global IT and telecom companies and the international humanitarian community agreed on six principles to better enable digital cash payments in crisis-affected populations. Digital cash has a proven track record of fostering entrepreneurialism and boosting local economies.

10) Last but not least, 100 leading businesses signed the Compact for Responsive and Responsible Leadership. The Compact was developed with the Forum’s International Business Council which will now develop a framework which will allow the measurement of a long-term approach.

For more of DAVOS 2017

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/10-achievements-davos-2017/

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Davos-Klosters, Switzerland 22 - 25 January 2014

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014 admitted that it can NOT solve all of world's problems but aimed to increase global economic risk resilience in the wake of acute structural unemployment and widening income inequality. . . . etc ... etc. ...

So, did you have a good night? Lots of drinking last night and I’m not sure what was in that cheese fondue but – oh, my – let’s just say it was a tough night. So enough about me and my toilet issues. Let’s get it started – like my friend Khan from Hollywood likes to say. Our keynote address this morning is from Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO of Manka Bros. Studios – currently the world’s largest media company–

Khan Manka, Jr.:

I was originally going to call my speech “Don’t Drop The SOPA” – but then I realized there were about 10,000 blogs that have used that as well as a very unfunny political pundit on Fox News. So I’ll just have to punt on that dumb joke. Though the analogy is apt. When you drop the soap in prison – well, you know what happens. If Hollywood studios were to drop the SOPA – well, the same thing would happen.

(A slight titter in the audience.)

Khan Manka, Jr.:

So… this is my second trip in a year to give a speech in Switzerland. As many of you know, I spoke to the creepy Bilderberg Conference last summer. I won’t go into details – but it was the worst 24 hours of my life. I mean, the hooded waiters were one thing – but the Lionel Richie concert – that was just too much!

(Big laugh from the room.)

Khan Manka, Jr.:

Man, when the Davos bankers think the Bilderbergers are creepy – you know they must be REALLY REALLY CREEPY. Cause you guys are a fucked up bunch. Do you really think you can do anything to help anybody in the world? You freaks are delusional. Panels and Powerpoint slides aren’t going to cut it. Admit it, you’re here for the hot toddys and snow bunnies– that’s right, I’m looking at you Angela Merkel!

(A few gasps and a couple of walk outs.)

Khan Manka, Jr.:

Klaus, please, back off. Do you want me to tell the crowd that it wasn’t the cheese that put you on that toilet all night?

(Klaus Schwab backs away a bit but stays on the stage.)

Khan Manka, Jr.:

Now I can tell there are a few people here from Silicon Valley. I can tell because you are wearing hoodies instead of business casual like you were told. Yet another rule you seem to have disregard for. Why would you care less about what your hosts want or think? It’s called human decency, assholes.

You could care less about anything because you think you run the world.

For more insight on DAVOS from the speech of Khan Manka, Jr, here's the link:

The Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines Underground River is reputed to be the longest navigable underground river in the World.

Where precious stones and crystals can be found. ;)

Turquoise that gives added splendor to the place.

Under study gemstones that glitter like diamonds and adorn the floor and the surrounding walls.

An awesome sight of crystals

Of corals that blanket the high rise nature's wall

The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park Philippines, features a limestone karst mountain landscape with an 8.2 km. navigable underground river.

A distinguishing feature of the river is that it winds through a cave before flowing directly into the South China Sea. It includes major formations of stalactites and stalagmites, and several large chambers. The lower portion of the river is subject to tidal influences.

At the mouth of the cave, a clear lagoon is framed by ancient trees growing right to the water's edge. Monkeys, large monitor lizards, and squirrels find their niche on the beach near the cave.